Here’s a snapshot of the most popular stories voted on Mixx EVER. Number 1) is about google maps, number 2) about Digg, number 3) about Mixx becoming a â€œRefugeeâ€ camp for Digg users, number 4) still about Digg and number 5) about Mixx (in comparaison of Digg). Please mixx users move on !

Which advertising media buys perform strongly for your company? (select all that apply)

Datran Media, an email marketing solutions provider, has released a survey on online marketing. Results show that according to professional marketers, email marketing is still the strongest performing media. They interviewed marketers from 90 companies including OgilvyOne Worldwide, Avenue A/Razorfish and Stamps.com (for the complete survey). I know that it is quite difficult to measure ROI of social media marketing but still…, may be next year they will include the option into the survey. In the meantime, we should find an appropriate way to measure the ROI. The next picture is taken from another survey on SMM, it shows that there is no unique way to calculate your success.

I went to the Montreal Marketing Association’s happy hour yesterday in order to have some information on the membership. I’m not yet a member but I’m looking to join the association. The annual membership is about 270$ and gives access to different activities all listed on the AMM website. The most valuable activity (according to me) is the possibility to join what they call a Think Tank. It seems to be a weekly discussion and networking meeting regrouping marketing people from non-competitive industries. I like the idea.

I was also pleased to chat with Aurelie Ponton about finding a way to protect our industry to define the internet marketing strategist profession (if there is one…). The discussion was based on the fact that anybody can advertise himself as an internet marketer (think about Wal Mart who is now offering SEO and SEM services !), so according to her, being member of the AMM could be a way to show our qualifications. The only thing is that I’m not sure if the AMM is doing any selection on their membership ?

I was a bit disappointed to refuse the invitation from Mathieu and Michelle to get something to eat after the event, but I wanted to attend Montreal StartUpCamp at La SAT. Startup Camp Montreal is an event dedicated to everything Startup. It is the forum where early stage companies, investors and on-lookers alike can share information and validate pitches live.

Great news ! We finally have our monthly social media meetup. For further info see all the details on Michelle’s blog. I am part of the organization, so feel free to drop me a comment if you have any suggestions, we are truly open to feedback. It is going to be a networking event powered by a valuable conference. See also 3e mardi | Third tuesday on Facebook.

I’m writing this quick post on last Yultour because I really enjoined the event. If you are not already familiar with Yultour, it can be described as a gathering of people into the tourism industry sharing this common interest on the impacts of the internet on their industry. The initiative comes from Pierre Bellerose of Tourisme Montreal and they describe themselves as a group of ‘blogueurs et gestionnaires adeptes du e-tourisme’. What brings truly a plus to this networking event is that there is a short presentation that comes with the meeting.

What can we learn from museums?

This editionâ€™s presentation (sorry I didnâ€™t catch the speakerâ€™s name) has shown us how a conservative industry (mainly museums) has embraced the spirit of the social media marketing (or at least some of social media tools). For example:

Podcasting: Museums already have audio-guides for exhibitions, why not making podcast with these tapes? For example, one my favorite museum,the MOMA, also offers recordings especially for teens or kids, what a nice way to reach a younger audience!

Tagging: There is even the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, that allows anybody to tag their collection with their own label. They have created an interactive database that contains thousands of zoomable images. Pretty impressive!

For more info on Yultour visit the Facebook Group ! + When I’ll get the chance I’ll try to check what museums in Montreal are doing with these social media tools.

Most of the people that I know are blogging for business related reasons. In fact, it becomes obvious that blogging can be more than efficient to create a communication with your users, customers, providers, fans, employees… By giving people a quite easy way to open the discussion with your organisation, not only they will take part in the discussion but they will involve themselves (if itâ€™s not already done) into the creation of their own personal space on the web. I spent part of yesterday going through some of these personal spaces, journals and other web logs created by Montrealers. Iâ€™d like to share what I have found with you in the following post.

4. Fagstein: Steve Faguy describes himself has a twenty-something geek freelance journalist who lives in Montreal. I would say that if trad journalism has difficulties to reach a younger audience, that’s partly because of blogs like his where you can find all the news about the city plus a lot more.

7. LightSpeedChronicles: She is a video game producer living in Montreal, talks about her life in general, running, and quite often speaks of gaming and game development to a non-gamer audience. They call her lightspeedchick… find out why on her blog.

Your blog DNA

So many blogs, so many reasons to write, to publish… As seen on Zero Seconde, here’s my top 10 9 reasons why I blog: 1-To communicate, 2-To define myslef, 3-To learn, 4-To network, 5-To be seen, 6-To inform, 7-To sell, 8-To influence, 9-To remember. May I ask you whats are yours?

———————————————————–

This post was mainly inspired by the feedback that I received on my blog lately, I was asked to share about or experiences working into internet marketing. Few days ago, NVI (Guillaume) had a meeting with the whole marketing management of a company offering several of the most popular brands in Canada. One of the vice-president’s questions was about understanding social media marketing (who’s reading blogs, what are they?-blogs-, who’s commenting?). These questions were justified considering that their top marketing agency that they deal with advises them the best they can but sometimes doesn’t have answers to questions such as, where should we go?, how can we reach our customers, what should avoid and why?…